The Wars That We Fight

Chapter Five

(Hi everyone! Welcome to Chapter Five! We hope you enjoy what you read here. If you do, please consider leaving us a vote or a comment. If you don't like it, or you see something that we should change or correct, please comment anyway; as always, we're very open to constructive criticism. Thanks in advance for your support!

- E and A)

Gregory let his eye run over the thousands, if not millions, of letters sprawled across the old factory wall. They seemed to twist and dance, jumping into crevices, tumbling off towards the ground, climbing back up into the sky, and shouting their freedom relentlessly. He found the spot where he had seen that girl, Audra, writing. He reread what was there, noticing the additional lines he had not seen before.

He had gone there on an impulse after visiting Peg in the hospital. Unwilling to go back to his parents and their house, he had ambled through the Senvalorate sectors in a purposeless search for an unknown answer to an unknown question. Remembering the girl he had seen writing about numbers, he took a course that would lead back to the spot where he now stood. Now faced with the empty loading bay, Gregory became motionless, suddenly feeling hollow. He wanted to write something back, ask for friendship, find someone who would help him to stay sane now that Peg was away in a hospital. He looked over their discourse again. She was searching to be more than a number; she was like him, he thought. She was no one, just a number. And the response had been one of hope, one which Gregory's eyes drank in, feeling comfort in the very word change.

You can change that.

How?

And beneath that:

Let me teach you.

He took out a pen, struggling to find a space where he could write noticeable letters on the rough brick. What would he say?

Hello. We met here before and you offered me a handshake. I'd like to see you again. We seem to share a lot of ideas, and I wanted to talk more. I'll be here again at 16:00 on the 15th. Please come. The message looped between words and drawings from years prior, dropping off at abrupt angles and sliding over other scribbles.

He went home reluctantly, a wild sense of vulnerability and risk laughing through his veins.

***

"Where is Gregory?" asked Mr. Ribbel, glancing over his wife's shoulder out the window at the little shoots of leaves that were becoming visible in the garden.

"I don't know," she said. "Ask Analyn."

"I'm glad to see you're so concerned with the wellbeing of our son," he sneered.

Analyn did not know where Gregory was. So Mr. Ribbel went back to his chair facing the window, where his wife was a shadow in the periphery of his vision.

"I don't think he could be in any trouble. He's a good kid," Mrs. Ribbel said at last.

His forehead gathered in the centre of his face, as if tectonic plates had shifted beneath his skin, redirecting his eyebrows like ocean currents.

"The boy's a nitwit! He's probably busy poking the Zero Council right now asking for trouble, just like with that stupid little thing he wrote about the hospitals. God, what did I do wrong as a parent?"

"He'll grow out of it."

Mr. Ribbel swallowed his contempt, watching his wife, as she looked absently at a scratch on the arm of the chair where she was sitting. He looked at her straw-coloured hair and her lovely face, and the makeup hiding it, and the silk blouse which strangled her around the neck, and again at the waist. She wore a pair of simple pearl earrings, and he couldn't remember if he had bought them as a birthday gift or not. He decided that he probably had, and if not, he knew he had bought her scores of other earrings. Mr. Ribbel suddenly wished he had given them all to someone else. Someone who was hideous, and wore no lipstick, and who smiled and said serious words without the same delirium he had come to know in his wife. He wanted somebody else.

***

"You'll need to fill out form C-316," the clerk informed Anita, handing her a clipboard with some papers, that were more black ink than they were blank space. "Then when you get that approved you can get your R-3, which is obviously the form you're after. But make sure to keep the C-316 because you'll have to submit it with the R-3. The processing for that should take 2 to 3 weeks, then you'll get your pin and papers in the mail. Sound good?"

"HR told me I could get temporary papers until the final approval comes back?"

"Oh, for that you'll need to fill out the T-12 once you get approval on the C-316. Just fill out what I gave you for now, and obviously we'll need your current documents and your letter of recommendation, and then ask the other clerk for it when you're done."

Anita found a chair in the desolate waiting room. The arms on the chair were the same black metal posts that served as legs, and the stained blue fabric covering the seat provided most of the cushioning. Balancing the clipboard on one knee, Anita took the dry black pen attached to the top of it and began to write.

Full name: Anita Dalton

Current rank: Six

Requested rank: Three

Reason for promotion:

The form was infinite. Anita dropped the pen, letting it dangle next to her leg by the string that connected it to the clipboard. The room was next to empty. A few other poor souls were immersed in papers too. The clerk that had given Anita her papers mindlessly sipped coffee, a battered book in one hand. The smell of old carpets permeated the air, numbing Anita's nose. She kept writing.

***

Audra pulled her sweater in closer as she walked against the wind. Dust twinkled and sputtered silently in loitering circles as the breeze kicked around the debris. The buildings had been demolished entirely now, and the fragments and scraps of Senvalorate lives which dotted and littered the plane were the only remnants.

When she reached the abandoned loading bay, she could see the boy from before leaning against a wall, scrutinizing the pitted surface of his wristwatch.

"Hi," she said, the word coming out in two awkward lumps as she hesitated midway through.

His neck snapped upwards as the wall seemed to push him into a standing position.

"Hi."

"What did you want to see me about?"

"I guess... I wanted to talk to someone. And you're the only person who I can confide in."

"Oh."

"My friend, Peg, is in one of those horrible hospitals. And someone needs to know how bad that is. I think she might've already been hurt by those pigs."

"I'm sorry to hear that... Was there something you wanted me to do?" Audra asked, her suspicion deliberately apparent.

"Well, I need help. I need to get her out of there before they kill her. And I think I can do it if—"

"No."

"But—"

"I understand that you're worried about your friend. I've even read a thing about how dangerous these hospitals are. But that does not mean I'm going to put myself at risk for a complete stranger."

"Wait... what's this thing you're talking about?"

"The thing I read? Oh, not really a big deal. Something that someone put up on the bulletin boards at my school. I'm not even sure how credible it is, but kudos to whoever had the guts to write it."

"You don't go to K6, do you?"

"You do too?"

Gregory nodded, and as he did, something changed in the way his eyes reflected the hazy light of afternoon.

"I wrote it," he felt a twinge of pride when he saw the look on Audra's face. "I'm so mad it got taken down, though. I have half a mind to write another paper on how it got censored."

"Maybe," Audra smiled. "It's a lot more reasonable than stealing patients from hospitals."

"Does that mean you want to help me write it?"

"I didn't say that exactly," she replied.

"Not exactly."